The Evil-Warder

Zhou Jingshan made his living warding evil from new houses, and in these parts his name was known for it. Whenever a family raised a dwelling over an old grave or a buried well, or the beams groaned at midnight for no reason, they would send word, and he would come with his compass. He carried a lacquered wooden case, worn bright from handling, holding the compass, cinnabar, a length of red thread, and a few coins wrapped in yellow cloth. At the gate he would not enter at once. He walked three circles around the foundation, thumb against the rim of the compass, listening to the needle tremble in his wrist. He said evil made no shape; it only set the needle shaking. Where it shook hardest was the evil position. The warder must bury his ward before the evil took form, pinning shut the mouth in the earth. Bury it, and the house rests; leave it, and those within hear fingernails scraping at the soil beneath the wall every night.

The first time the young apprentice asked what a ward truly was, Zhou spread the coins in his palm and said it was only finding a substitute for the one below, so it took another place and left the living be. He said it without looking at the boy, staring instead at his own shadow, as if something crouched there, waiting for him to explain. The boy understood only later: the substitute was not for the evil. It was for a fellow craft.

The houses he had warded—seven in East Village, nine along West Ridge, the row of new buildings across the river—he had walked each one, and the compass had trembled at every evil position. Yet each time he went home, the ground beneath his own feet seemed emptier by a measure. At first he paid it no mind, taking it for loose earth in an old house. Then came a humid summer with three soaking rains, and one night he heard an echo rise from under the central hall—as if someone were beating an overturned empty jar with a wooden mallet, once, twice, muffled in the mud, beating until his heart lurched.

He lit a lamp and went down to look. The courtyard was sound; the grey bricks unbroken. Yet the cinnabar on the threshold had bled a flush of red, deeper than any line he had ever painted warding for another. He crouched and tapped the bricks with a finger. The sound was hollow. In that moment it came to him: all these years he had buried wards in other people's earth, and his own foundation had grown emptier for it—the ground he filled for the living, he had drawn from beneath his own feet.

In the early years his hand was sure. Old Wu of East Village raised a new house and called him. The compass shook at the wall behind the stove. He dug a half-foot and found a rotted coffin plank, some lone spirit buried God knows when. He scattered glutinous rice, touched cinnabar, buried a coin, tamped the earth. After that the Wu family slept in peace and praised Master Zhou to all. He only smiled, and went home to find two of his own grey bricks loosened, ringing hollow underfoot. He said nothing and filled them with broken stone.

The teahouse on North Street was renovated and named him too. That time the evil lay in the channel under the counter; he lifted the stone slab and found a coil of green-mossed hemp rope, as if someone had once hung something from it and hastily thrown it underground. He could not say where the rope came from, only that its end still carried a dark red, like blood, like rust. He cut the rope, buried a coin, sealed the slab. In the days after, the grey bricks of his yard loosened one by one, ringing hollow underfoot like empty buckets. At night he lay on the ground to listen; the hollow sound was not from beneath the bricks but from deeper earth, once and again, keeping time with his own footsteps.

The widow on West Ridge was to remarry, and her new husband built a house and called him too. This time the evil lay at the threshold; the moment the cinnabar touched, the red seeped down the brick joints like blood from flesh, wetting a wide patch. Zhou stared at that flush and thought it was not the color of cinnabar at all, but something below forcing the red up through the soil. He warded in haste and hurried home. Midway he heard footsteps behind him, light then heavy, and though he turned again and again, no one was there. He pushed his gate and found the center of the hall sunk another inch, as if something beneath were pushing up, or the earth under his own feet were being eaten away, bite by bite.

The rich Qian family raised a row of new buildings across the river and called him too. That time the evil lay in the wall-belly at the stair's turning; the compass shook his wrist sore. He opened the plaster and found a child's embroidered shoe wedged inside, its face faded but its stitching still plainly old work. He knew that shoe—it was the one Master Liu, before he left, had asked Zhou to carry to the orphan girl on East Street. How it had come to be buried in the Qian wall, he could not say. He dared not speak of it; he pushed the shoe back, painted three strokes of cinnabar over it, warding again and again. That night going home, the flush on his own threshold had spread across the whole stone slab, red as if about to spill through the door. He crouched at the gate with a wet cloth to wipe it; the red only deepened, the cloth turned the color of blood, and he stopped, knowing he was not wiping cinnabar but the print of something returning from the soil.

The apprentice asked, Master, you have warded for so many—why not your own house? Zhou smiled. I will, he said. In time. The time was set by Master Liu, and as he spoke the compass in its case scraped once against the dial, the needle against the brass, a sound so fine only he could hear it.

Master Liu had been the geomancer of this town before him, his compass the surest anywhere; no one broke ground without Liu's eye first. Zhou had been his apprentice, carrying the case, and in three years he knew every character on the dial and could read an evil position as well as any—yet the patrons knew only Liu. The year the town raised a stone bridge, the foundation needed warding, and the patron offered a rich fee for a single master. Liu had accepted first; Zhou arrived after, and the patron, embarrassed, said one would do. Liu looked at Zhou and said, You are young, your road is long—let me take this bridge. It was a command to stand aside.

Zhou did not stand aside. Beneath the bridge lay an abandoned well, its wall weeping water, and the patron feared the footing. Liu said three wards must be sunk to the bottom to hold the water-evil. Zhou said one would do, saving coin and trouble. The patron, cheap, took Zhou's word. On the night the ward went down a heavy fog fell. Liu crouched at the well's lip to set the compass, leaning forward; Zhou steadied him from behind—his grip a little too firm, or perhaps he did not steady him at all—and Liu's foot slipped, and he fell into the abandoned well. The water was shallow, but fallen stones from years past lined the bottom, and he did not come up.

Zhou lowered the ward, then added two more, more than he had promised, the red thread knotted tight. He took Liu's signboard home and told the street that Master Liu had gone wandering, and he would mind his senior's work. The town believed him, and after that knew only Master Zhou.

But Liu had not gone.

The first years gave no sign. Zhou warded, the compass shook at the evil position, and he took it for ordinary earth-evil: rice, cinnabar, coin, done like a habit worn smooth. Then slowly he knew better. Each house he warded, each night he slept at home, he dreamed the sound of water in the well, and the breath of a man, close at the nape of his neck, creeping cold. He turned over; behind him, nothing, only a damp stain on the pillow. He lit a lamp in the dark; the damp was cold, as if drawn from the well, bitter with cinnabar.

Stranger still: every ward he sank held more than the evil beneath the house. The East Village family, warded, heard the scratching at the wall-root grow worse; they lifted the brick and found beneath the ward a wet handprint, five fingers clear, as if someone had reached from the mud and been shoved back by force. The wife came knocking at his door in the night. Zhou opened the compass again; the needle shook his wrist numb, yet he could fix no new evil position—the evil seemed brought in by him, entering the gate at his side. He sank another ward, but by the next day the print had appeared on the threshold instead, in a different posture, as if feeling its way upward.

One year the rice-shop keeper on South Slope came weeping: the warded shop, every first and fifteenth of the month, lost a liter of rice from the bottom of the bin, as if someone scooped it from below. Zhou opened the compass; the needle trembled in a circle under the bin and would not settle. He lifted the boards; the ward was there, but beneath it lay half a bowl, its rim chipped—the coarse porcelain Master Liu had used in life. He knew that band of blue glaze; he had seen it by the well. He buried the bowl deeper, but the keeper said the rice still lessened, only now a wet handprint stayed on the board after, as if someone had scooped and then pressed a hand there. The keeper later moved away; a stranger rented the empty shop, and on the first month's fifteenth he said he heard someone humming under the bin at night, an old tune no one in town had sung for a dozen years. Zhou knew it was not evil. It was Liu, leaving himself a bowl and a hand in every place Zhou had warded—the wider Zhou warded, the more footing Liu took.

Then he understood: Liu was lodged in his warding. Each house he warded carried a breath of Liu down with it, pinned under the ward. The ward held the house's evil and held Liu too; but Liu was a living grievance, and the harder he was pinned, the more he returned upon Zhou. The more he warded, the tighter Liu wound about him, and the more hollow his own foundation grew, until at night he heard not an echo below the hall but a man turning in the stone joints, his joints clicking.

He began to fear his own courtyard. Yet he could not stay away. He had warded evil for others all his life, and in the end his own house was the emptiest place of all. He tried burying a ward under his own central hall—coins, then yellow talismans covered in writing, then a bowl of glutinous rice, even the blood of a living rooster. Each time the ground stayed level a few days, then cracked deeper; the cinnabar on the threshold bled redder; at midnight the floor sank its inch for no cause, and black water seeped from the brick joints, rank enough to sting the nose. The apprentice came with a meal and stepped into the yard; his foot dropped, half a shoe swallowed by the earth, and when he pulled free, black water from the joints clung to his sole and stank three days after washing. The boy went pale. Master, your yard is leaking, he said. Not leaking, Zhou answered. Empty. When it is empty of everything, the one below will come up.

He had tried to stop, once. One spring he put off three warding jobs in the east township and shut his gate, meaning to reverse-ward his own yard and fill the hollow under his feet. He opened the center of the hall, filled it with three pecks of glutinous rice, a whole sheet of talisman-paper covered in writing, and a living rooster, warding seven times by the master's method. For three days the yard was level; on the fourth night he heard the rooster crow from the soil, the sound muffled in the mud, more urgent with each cry, as if throttled. He dug and looked: the rice had blackened, the paper soaked, the rooster long dead, yet the red in the brick seams was brighter than before he warded. He understood: the more he filled, the more hollow he grew—what he warded out was never evil, but his own foundation; what returned was all Liu. After that he dared not break ground in his own yard, and let the inch of hollow sink night by night.

At last he resolved to sink the heaviest ward of all at the very center of his foundation. He chose the night before the mid-seventh-month festival, when the earth's breath sinks lowest and holds the heaviest evil—and the heaviest grievance. He prepared three things: Master Liu's own compass, which he had kept, its face gone dull but its needle still true, of late always pointing at his chest; a packet of glutinous rice mixed with cinnabar, the grains dyed through and gleaming; and a length of red thread pulled from the abandoned well, wound seven times, said to bind what lay at the bottom, its end still carrying a little moss from the well wall.

The night was windless; the moon was yellow as if behind oiled paper. He opened the center of the hall with three strokes of the hoe. The earth was loose; half a foot down he met a hollow, its walls the fallen stones of years past, cold and bare, the very ones he had seen at the well's bottom, water beading in their seams and falling onto the back of his hand, cold to the bone. He set the compass in the hollow, face up; the needle, the moment it fell, shook in a frenzy, rattling earth from the mouth of the hole, as if something below were pulling at it. He scattered the rice, poured the cinnabar, wound the thread again and again, then filled and tamped the earth, three times, until his feet went numb. He knelt at the edge of the hole and watched the needle tremble on without rest in the moonlight, its tip scoring the dial with a fine thin sound, as if someone below were raking the underside of the compass with a fingernail. He could no longer tell whether it was the needle that shook, or the hand beneath the earth, gripping the needle's tail, willing him to fill himself in as well.

He thought it warded. The instant the earth was filled, the compass needle in his hand stopped—not still, but reversed: the tip pointed straight at his own chest. He looked down; the hall floor was level, but on the threshold the cinnabar had bled a handprint, fingers spread, climbing from the threshold to his very feet. He crouched slowly and laid his hand on the print. It was warm—as if someone through the earth had clasped him back, knuckles distinct, the grip not light. He stared at the print a long while; the warmth under his thumb crept upward, over his wrist and into his heart, as if the grip with which Liu had steadied him that year had been planted there from the start.

He did not sleep the rest of the night. The yard was unnaturally still; not even insects, the wind stopped, as if the whole village had been covered mouth and nose. At the third watch the ground sounded again—not the muffled jar but the water in the well, at his ear, once, once, exactly as he had heard it the night Liu fell, the rhythm unchanged. He lit a lamp and went to look; at the center of the hall, where he had tamped the earth, it had sunk another inch, the brick seams split, and from the black within came a damp cold breath, bitter with cinnabar.

He laid his ear to it and heard someone breathing below, right in the stone seam, inches from his face. The breath came out carrying the well's rankness and cinnabar's bitterness, as if Liu, across a dozen years of mud, were leaning close to look at him, at the mark the well water had left on his face that year. And Zhou understood at last what the final ward had held. House by house he had warded evil, pinning Liu layer by layer into other people's earth; the deeper the ward, the more Liu's grievance returned, all of it into this emptiest foundation of his. The ward he sank tonight was meant to hold his own house—but what he buried was Liu's compass, the thread from the well, Liu himself summoned back beneath his feet. He had not warded evil. He had gathered Liu, from under a thousand wards, into his own foundation—and the more completely he gathered him, the more thoroughly empty he became.

Near dawn he tried to lift that brick and see beneath. The brick turned, and a cold draft shot to his face; he saw not stone but a pair of hands, wet, reaching up out of the dark, the fingertips still smeared with the cinnabar he had scattered, red and bright as if lifted from blood. The hands did not grab him; they only lay open, as if waiting for him to come down, as he had once, at the well's lip, steadied Liu with that hand. He watched the hands a long while; they lay open too, neither advancing nor withdrawing, as if to say, come down, and the house is whole.

He did not dare reach. He pressed the brick back, but the print of those hands had already passed through the grey brick and stained the earth at his feet, red lines upon red lines, as if someone beneath his shadow had traced them again.

After that, Zhou's yard was never level. At night the floor sank its inch, the cinnabar bled its flush on the threshold; he dared not open the compass, yet it shook unopened in its case, the needle scraping the dial through the wood, scrape and pause, as if someone were counting the night watches. The town still came for him, and he went, the compass shaking at others' evil positions, and he buried their wards, and came home to an emptier foundation. The more houses he warded, the larger the hollow under his feet, until he could not tell whether he had held evil for the living, or gathered, for Liu, every house beneath himself.

The carpenter Chen next door rose one night and saw a light in Zhou's yard—not a lamp, but a red seeping from the brick seams, now bright now dim, as if someone beneath had lit a lamp about to go out. The next day Chen came asking, Brother Zhou, is something buried in your yard? Zhou said, a ward. Chen said, but the light moves, like it is crawling out. Zhou said nothing; seeing the guest out, he caught a red stain under his own shadow, following him, impossible to shake.

Once, a new house in East Village raised its beam and called him. He walked the three circles as ever; the compass shook, and he looked down at the needle—it did not point at the evil position but at his own shadow. He followed the shadow's line and saw, at the foot of the new wall, a handprint bleeding through, fingers spread, the very match of the one on his own threshold, red and bright. He understood then: Liu was not in his house alone. Liu was in every ward he had sunk, attached to every house he had warded, walking at his side, keeping account of every fellow-craft's grievance he had pinned down. All his life warding evil for others, he had never held evil—he had held Liu. And Liu had long since taken every one of his wards for his own house.

That winter solstice Zhou took no more work. He shut himself in the yard, where the cinnabar print had already climbed the whole threshold, red as if about to overflow. At night he heard not only breathing but a low laugh muffled in the mud, once and again, like Liu humming as he had crouched at the well's lip setting the compass. He lay on the brick at the hall's center and pressed his ear close, and through the stone seams Liu told him: you ward well, every house made fast—but you forgot, a ward holds the earth, not the man. You pinned me into a thousand homes, and those thousand became my houses; you gathered me back, and this yard is mine.

Zhou said nothing. He laid his hand on the warm print, and the print clasped him back, heavier than before. Beyond the yard the snow fell, so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat. He thought of that first warding, and the boy's question—Master, what is a ward, truly? He could answer now: a ward is not a substitute for evil. It is the grave a warder digs for himself.

After that no one in town saw him leave the yard again. Those who passed his gate heard not wind within but the water of the well, once and again, sounding against the door planks. The cinnabar print on the threshold climbed higher and higher, up the door frame, across the sill, as if someone were growing out of the earth, inch by inch, reclaiming the house from the outside in. Now and then a bold one peered through the crack of the gate and saw only the brick at the hall's center, slightly raised, as if something beneath were testing it, push by push, to pry the brick open.

Record of the Midnight Watch: He who wards evil wards men. Zhou Jingshan took a fellow craft as his ward, settling a thousand homes and emptying himself. The hands beneath the foundation may not be Liu alone—every grievance pressed down has learned to reach from the soil. If you would ask a man to ward your evil, first ask: is his own house level?